High Garden

Tom Spach’s first impression of Hong Kong was quite disconcerting – a dense city in the nature and a nature in the dense city: a vision far removed from the generally shared image of the city as an overly concentrated megalopolis. Spach started a photographic series on the subject, intrigued by this very close proximity between the city and its surrounding environment, when the urban meets the tropical forest. High Garden, prefaced by Mireille Diestchy, examines this relationship and the interface between the urban and the nature, focusing on the extremities, the interstices, from the maze of tower blocks to the neighbouring forests. It questions how we coexist with nature in an urban environment and the place of nature in the city. Tom Spach (b. 1987), urban planner and geographer, lives and works in Lyon, France.